News tagged with perpetrator

Children ages 2-11 view an alarming amount of television shows that contain forms of social bullying or social aggression. Physical aggression in television for children is greatly documented, but this is the first in-depth ...

(Phys.org)—Researchers from the Max Planck institute have been conducting experiments with chimpanzees that appear to indicate that the apes are not willing to punish other chimps when witnessing them doing something "bad" ...

As any crime show buff can tell you, DNA evidence identifies a victim's remains, fingers the guilty, and sets the innocent free. But in reality, the processing of forensic DNA evidence takes much longer than a 60-minute primetime ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- After examining murder-suicides over a 145-year period, a Ball State research team has found the majority of such acts occur in the home and the perpetrator and victim are in an intimate relationship.

A portable device can detect the presence of the anthrax bacterium in about one hour from a sample containing as few as 40 microscopic spores, report Cornell and University of Albany researchers who invented it. The device ...

A brutal case of infanticide has been recently reported in the black-billed magpie. In a series of vivid videos, an adult perpetrator kills or drags out all six nestlings from a nest. Who could have done it, and why?

Suspect

In the parlance of criminal justice, a suspect is a known person suspected of committing a crime.

Police and reporters often incorrectly use the word suspect when referring to the perpetrator of the offense (perp for short). The perpetrator is the robber, assailant, counterfeiter, etc. --the person who actually committed the crime. The distinction between suspect and perpetrator recognizes that the suspect is not known to have committed the offense, while the perpetrator -- who may not yet have been suspected of the crime, and is thus not necessarily a suspect -- is the one who actually did. The suspect may be a different person from the perpetrator, or there may have been no actual crime, which would mean there is no perpetrator.

A common error in police reports is a witness description of the suspect (as a witness generally describes the perpetrator, while a mug shot is of the suspect). Frequently it is stated that police are looking for the suspect, when there is no suspect; the police could be looking for a suspect, but they are surely looking for the perpetrator, and very often it is impossible to tell from such a police report whether there is a suspect or not.

Possibly because of the misuse of suspect to mean perpetrator, police have begun to use person of interest, possible suspect, and even possible person of interest, to mean suspect.

Under the judicial systems of the U.S., once a decision is approved to arrest a suspect, or bind him over for trial, either by a prosecutor issuing an information, a grand jury issuing a true bill or indictment, or a judge issuing an arrest warrant, the suspect can then be properly called a defendant, or the accused. Only after being convicted is the suspect properly called the perpetrator.